I grew up a Yankee fan, I favor Pitchers whenever possible, I am a stathead, and my dream job is to be a GM for an MLB franchise. In the summer, I go to MLB games and catch baseballs. In the winter, I write about what teams are doing to get better or worse. I try to be positive and unbiased in my writing, but that isn't always possible when evaluating teams truthfully.

Ballhawk and Junior Ballhawk of the Year Ballot

I know that one’s ballot for voting on these awards is usually a private matter, but I think I’m going to go ahead and make my ballot as well as the reasoning behind it so some other voters out there can get at least one other person’s perspective on the voting besides their own. I am by no means the “right” way to vote on the award; simply, my way of voting is *a* way of voting on the award, and I thought it’d be fun to share it.

Also, even though the ballot is restricted to three candidates, I’m going to give my top-5 for each award, since I think there are many more than six total worthy candidates. The name in parentheses is the person’s mygameballs.com username, since you’ll need that to vote for them.

Ballhawk of the Year ballot

1. Greg Barasch (gbarasch)

I must admit, I didn’t have Greg in either of my top-2 ballot spots last year, and despite having only 13 more baseballs than last year total, I bumped Greg up to the top spot because he still had an excellent year. Unlike last year, Greg beat every single ballhawk on the site in head-to-head match-ups (which you can check for yourself by clicking here). Not only that, but he averaged almost a whole Ball Per Game (.93 to be specific) higher than anyone else on the site. He also had by far the best rate of double-digit games (1:3) of anyone on the site. The only thing that made me hesitant to put him at the top of my ballot was his lack of game balls, but he dominated his part of ballhawking enough this year to more than make up for that in my opinion. Not to mention, he did all of this going to a majority of his games in New York, both of the stadiums inside of which are tough places to snag baseballs and have a bunch of competition to deal with.

2. Alex Kopp (akopp1)

He perhaps didn’t have the average or total baseball count of other candidates, but like Greg, he dominated his own part of the ballhawking top-10. He had more game home run snags than anyone in the top-10 ballhawks. Heck, he almost had as many (8) as the rest of the top-10 combined (10). And also like Greg, I had my reservations about putting Alex so high up, but he also attended 92% of his games at Oriole Park at Camden Yards, which has one of the larger constituencies of ballhawk competition in the country. It was not uncommon for him to have two or three ballhawks up on the flag court competing with him for game home runs. If he had the ballpark to himself, he would easily have double-digit home run numbers. Even as it is, he had a game to game home run ratio (8.25:1) almost three times better than the next best ballhawk in the top-10 (23.25:1). That’s amazing.

3. Zack Hample (zackhample)

He got beat out in terms of total baseballs by Erik Jabs 723-710. However, he made up for it in my mind by out-snagging Erik in game home runs (4-0), double digits games (27-23. Despite going to 14 less games), and Balls Per Game average (7.63-6.76). He is probably the most rounded of any of the candidates for the award.

4. Erik Jabs (ErikJ)

Besides the number two baseball snagger, Erik almost doubled the baseball count of anyone else on the site. That alone would be enough to get him into the top-3 if it weren’t for some great years by other ballhawks. Pretty much the only reason Erik did not make my personal BotY ballot is the lack of strength in the other statistical categories. However, it should be noted that he ballhawks in the ballpark with perhaps THE toughest day-in-day out competition in the country in PNC Park. He also leaves games right after batting practice, so that makes all of his numbers that much more impressive since he doesn’t have time during the games to pad his stats at all. I don’t think the magnitude of his feats should be minimized at all because of the fact that I have him in the four spot.

5. Rick Gold (JQFC)

To the outsider, Rick and his 3.23 Balls Per Game paired with his 265 baseballs might seem like a guy who just went to a ton of games in order to get a bunch of baseballs and get into the top-10. Well an outsider wouldn’t know that Rick only goes after hit baseballs. For a ballhawk, averaging anything that nears 3.00 Balls Per Game is a great season, so Rick’s 3.23 isn’t unheard of, but still a phenomenal season. You may be thinking, “Getting three and a quarter hit baseballs in a batting practice isn’t hard to do.” Well the problem with that is this was Rick’s *average* for all of the games he went to. This would be difficult average with regular batting practices, but one has to also keep in mind that this average also includes batting practices that have been rained out–which Rick is particularly prone to since he plans his games out often weeks in advance and doesn’t skip games when he learns the weather isn’t going to be ideal. Well all of those games are automatic zeroes for Rick barring a game home run snag. Speaking of which, Rick might’ve been higher on this list had he had a normal year of his in terms of game home run snags, but he had some tough luck and only snagged three. That is still the third best amongst the top-10 baseball snaggers on the site.

Junior Ballhawk of the Year ballot

1. Grant Edrington (fireant02)

With 2013 essentially being his rookie year ballhawking, Grant started off his season slowly, but then he picked it up and snagged the most baseballs of any junior ballhawk with 102, outpacing the nearest competitor by almost thirty baseballs. And he also accomplished what almost no other junior ballhawks did by snagging a game home run. He all of which whilst battling the very tough OPACY ballhawk competition.

2. Paul Kom (paaoool123)-

He snagged an impressive 73 baseballs in 19 games. The majority of which were at the not-very-friendly Target Field.

3. Josh Herbert (PGHawkJosh)

Snagged an impressive 48 baseballs for a junior ballhawk, but even more impressively did so in just eight games to get him the highest Balls Per Game average amongst junior ballhawks.

4. Maddie Landis (angrybird447)

Like Grant, this was also essentially her rookie season, so 54 baseballs in 14 games is really impressive.

5. Harrison Tishler (htishler)

One of the few “veterans” on the junior circuit, Harrison didn’t make it into the upper echelon in terms of total baseball snagging with his 43 baseballs, but did so in far fewer games this season than his peer, going to only 9 games all season.

If you want to, you can leave your ballot as a comment, but don’t feel like you have to. You may also notice that I made the “RE: Ballhawk of the Year Parts I and II” private, so in order to still have the comments that accumulated there somewhere public, here are pictures of all three sets of comments and my responses:

10 Comments

I’ll see what I think when it comes to be voting time, but right now, I’m pretty close to you. I’ve been thinking Greg should get more support in the voting for a while. He always has a crazy average. “Total balls” is to “game average” what “wins” were to “ERA” in the pre-sabrmetics era. I have the same top 3 as you, but I’d put Zack before Alex. As for the juniors, gotta go with my guy, Harrison Tishler. He goes to a lo of MiLB games, but he does quite well for himself at CBP. And watch out, with more experience, Maddie could be the next Zack Hample (that’s not a joke).

Cook & Son- I agree with that to an extent. I’ve never voted fro Greg over Zack before, but this season the scales shifted immensely in his favor. 1. Usually I vote for Zack because although he averages a little less than Greg, he also goes to the dugout for the game much less than Greg does. But with the BIGS challenge, Zack went to the dugout almost just as much as Greg did this season. 2. Greg had a large enough of a lead in average that it made up for his lack of game home run and foul balls. 3. Greg beat Zack in the head-to-head competition for the first time since 2010. 4. Greg beat Zack in double-digit game percentage.
But anyway, I kind of agree with you on Maddie. I retroactively found out that we shared the same stadium with her once and she snagged as many baseballs as I did.

1. Ballhawk Shawn 2. Erik Jabs 3. Zack Hample. The reason I am voting for Shawn is because he was the best Game Home run ballhawk. Erik snagged the most balls over all, even though he didn’t stay for the game most of the time. Zack caught a good amount of home runs, and snagged a ball at every stadium despite a grueling schedule at times. I know I left a lot of great ballhawks off the ballot, but someone has to win……..

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Ballhawking Sites

Cook & Sons' Baseball Adventures
Although most ballhawking blogs are, Todd Cook’s narrative of his and his sons’ adventures going to ballparks is the closest thing there is to a father-son-baseball written reality show.

Hit Tracker
An amazing tool that was responsible for my success at Yankee Stadium in 2010. See Season end review (Nov, 1, 2010) if you want to see the difference @ Yankee Stadium.

My Game Balls
The ballhawking community’s mode of communication and competetion

My mygameballs.com account
Specifically *my* account on mygameballs.com which has much more detailed stats than I have time to write about

Plouffe's New Hairdo
One of my new Minnesota friends, Tony Voda’s ballhawking/Twins/music-in-the-offseason-but-sometimes-during-the-season-too blog.

Steel City Ballhawk
A blog written by elite ballhawk, Nick Pelescak, about all of the games he attends, which is a ton since he is a season ticket holder at PNC Park.

The Ballhawker
The ballhawking blog of a fellow New York ballhawk, Chris Hernandez.

Zack Hample (The Baseball Collector)
Now If you are reading this blog there is a .00009 % chance that you haven’t visited this blog, but as a service to the reason this blog exists I want to have Zack add that .00009% to his viewership. It is the least I can do.

MLBlogs I Recommend and Follow

Ballparks on a Budget
Ever want to go to a baseball game outside of your local team but don’t want to empty the bank? Alicia Barnhart’s your girl with Ballparks on a Budget. She should know how to spend wisely in going to games because, well, she’s been to them all. Just last

Dodger Blue World
Just a great blog written by dedicated Dodger super-fan Emma Amaya.

Minoring In Baseball
A blog written by the father of just a family who are all fans of the West Michigan Whitecaps who is just a great guy in general: Michael David.

MLB.com Blogs Central
As the title kind of suggests, this blog is pretty much the center of the MLBlogs unvierse. It apply sometimes goes by the moniker: “MLBlogosphere”

The Ballpark Guide
A MUST-read for any MiLB afficionados, or even many MLB fans. Malcolm MacMillan goes to different ballparks all over and details his visit on the blog and writes tips for anyone going to that ballpark on his website (which can be found on the blog’s homep

The Next White Sox GM
If you were a baseball mind growing up, you may have gotten a comment from an elder female family member (usually grandma) saying, “You should be the one to run the team with all the knowledge you’ve got about baseball.” Well, here’s a kid who might just

The Unbiased MLB Fan
Matt Huddleston doesn’t root for the teams; he roots for the players. I wish I could say more, but I suspect any other explanation of his blog would be a multi-centennial-word ordeal.

Three Up, Three Down
One would assume not getting into the MLB Fan Cave is a sad experience. (Well, at least I would; I’ve never been old enough to apply.) However, this group of fans turned that usually-sad experience and turned it into a great blog where there are just a sl

MLBlogs I Recommend

Observing Baseball Classics

"The Baseball" Book Review
In this entry I reviewed/summarized the entirety of the book “The Baseball: Stunts, Scandals, and Secrets Beneath the Stitches” written by Zack Hample.

10/19/10 ALCS: Yankee Stadium
Sure I had no clue how to write it, but this was my first ballhawking entry ever and my only of 2010, so it falls under the category “classic”

Ballhawk Charities 2012
Where I went over the four ballhawk charities I had heard of at the beginning of the season as a way of helping them out by getting the word out.

Case Study on Morality in Baseball
A research paper I did way back in the summer of 2010. I don’t necessarily agree with everything I wrote back then anymore, but it does add an interesting perspective to things especially in today’s steroid talk.

Collected Baseball Knick-knacks
Quite simply: pretty much everything baseball-related that I had collected and managed to keep ahold of as of November, 20, 2011.

Dissecting/Deconstructing Baseballs
I’ve taken apart several baseballs before, and it was fun, so I decided to make a video of me taking apart a baseball and adding tips for other people to do so too.

Favorite MLB Players
I did probably one of my funner videos on who my favorite players were from the present day, when I first started watching baseball, and my favorite player that I never saw play at all.

Houlihan Park Tour and Snagging Analysis
This is my high school, Fordham Prep,’s home field, which being the manager of the varsity team for three years, I spent proabably more games here than at any other baseball field. So when I returned to my high school for a day, I took a quick tour of the

Observing Baseball Trivia
See the description of the link two links above, but modify it slightly so it fits this entry’s title.

Pitching Aces in the Playoffs
My first ever “real” entry that I ever wrote back on the surplus of star pitchers in the 2010 playoffs. It was pretty good considering I knew nothing about blogging, or writing in general for that matter.

Pure Genius
This is just me explaining how the Phillies got three aces of pitchers; nothing fancy. But it was me showing my first flash of general manager mind to the world, so that’s why I like it.

Sabermetrics (the explanation)
This was me explaining some simple sabermetric statistics for the people of the world who have heard of the stats but never really knew what significance they had/have over the more common metrics. I take pride in this because it can potentially educate s

Survey of Adults Perception of Baseball
I surveyed a bunch of my teacher as to which baseball player was there favorite; both in and outside of New York. It’s a bit more complex than that, but the only way to understand is to read the entry.

Tour Target Field in the Snow
Target Field is in Minnesota, so it only felt fitting that I should take at least one day to tour it while it was buried in the snow. And that’s what this entry was: a video of me going around Target Field while it was snowing and there was a ton of snow

Weird Observing Baseball Facts and Records
I may yet do this every year…and it would then become its own link category–but for the meantime–there is only one set of Observing Baseball Facts and Records, so it definitely goes under “Observing Baseball Classics”.

Blast from the Baseball Past

8/24/08 Dodgers at Phillies: Citizens Bank Park
My second ever game to CBP that ended with Pedro Feliz hitting a three-run walk-off home run while my dad and I were in the car because we had to catch a flight to Detroit seven hours later that same day in New York.

Obsevers of Baseball

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